Published 4:00 am, Monday, March 26, 2001

2001-03-26 04:00:00 PDT Tetovo, Macedonia -- After days of waiting, the government sent hundreds of infantry troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships into the hills above this city and in a barrage of fire forced ethnic Albanian insurgents to pull back farther into the mountains.

As the offensive punched through rebel lines and moved into a hillside village yesterday, it brought the combatants into their closest quarters yet in the six-week conflict near the Macedonian border with the Serbian province of Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians constitute a majority.

A senior Macedonian official said the government was forced to act after receiving intelligence that Macedonian Slavs were beginning to form paramilitary groups in the ethnically mixed cities of Kumanovo and Kicevo and that the rebels planned to mortar Slav neighborhoods in Tetovo, the country's second-largest city. The rebels shelled one neighborhood Saturday, injuring four people.

The government claimed early successes in a campaign that the mountainous terrain could make prolonged and bloody. And while the government hopes the outcome will make possible real political dialogue between Macedonian Slavs and ethnic Albanians, it could just as easily pitch this increasingly polarized country into civil war.

"After an 11-day siege (around Tetovo), we could have lost control over the entire inter-ethnic relationship," Nikola Dimitrov, national security adviser to President Boris Trajkovski, said in an interview. "We had to stop this and very quickly. If not, the system itself would have lost all control."

The offensive began at 7 a.m. when the military unleashed an hours-long barrage of artillery and mortars, punctuated by heavy machine-gun fire, to prepare the ground for a late-morning strike by ground troops. That began shortly after Soviet-era T-55 tanks drove through downtown Tetovo, drawing applause in Slav neighborhoods of the city of 70,000 people, 25 miles west of Skopje, the Macedonian capital.

The poorly equipped Macedonian military -- some of whom went to battle yesterday in sneakers -- is receiving tactical advice from a British army team,

according to Macedonian and Western sources.

By afternoon, Macedonian troops led by seven armored personnel carriers and two tanks moved into the village of Gajre, in the hills just northwest of Tetovo, breaking through a rebel roadblock and forcing the insurgents to pull back.

Houses and cars were burning in the village, and bullets sent roof tiles flying as troops blasted houses suspected of harboring rebels. Two helicopters strafed the hillsides.

Some ethnic Albanians in Gajre expressed outrage at the attack, asserting government soldiers were targeting the houses of innocent civilians instead of insurgent positions.

After taking Gajre, the troops regrouped and set up positions overlooking Llavce, another rebel-held village just north of Gajre.

Reporting another government success, state television said Macedonian troops also had taken Tetovo Kale, the ancient Turkish fortress cresting a hill that it said had been a rebel stronghold.

Two soldiers, one police officer and four civilians were slightly injured, a government spokesman said. Police spokesman Stevo Pendarovski said the four civilians were a family riding in a taxi that entered a combat area. The number of rebel casualties was not known.

Critical in coming days will be the speed with which the military can reclaim territory from the rebels, who call themselves the National Liberation Army of Macedonia. Swiftness will stymie a festering radicalization of ethnic Albanians, who make up 35 percent of the population.

By nightfall, with explosions, fire and smoke clearly visible from town, the troops had taken several strategic villages without any apparent loss of life, at least among their forces, and they began taking up defensive positions, Macedonian officials said.

If the operation also goes well today, the officials said privately, Trajkovski is considering a rapid call for all-party negotiations on changes to the constitution and other laws to satisfy long-standing Albanian grievances.

The guerrillas say they are fighting for improved political and economic rights in the face of long oppression by the majority Slavs, who make up about two-thirds of Macedonia's 2 million people.

The government counters that the ethnic Albanian minority has full political rights and that its political parties are members of a coalition government.